


Port Touching for Dummies

by coyotes



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 10:31:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3131300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotes/pseuds/coyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hey, Vaughn?”</p>
<p>Vaughn tapped his thumb against the port in response and Rhys shivered, swallowing down all of the noises he almost made.</p>
<p>“Don’t stop, okay?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Port Touching for Dummies

**Author's Note:**

> rhys' port is an erogenous zone. he never trusts anyone to touch it. don't look at me.

They’re kissing the first time it happens – sort of. They’re in this flimsy office chair, the kind that squeaks when you lean too far back and it’s probably the biggest blessing ever that nobody can hear them with the door shut. Anyway, Vaughn – Vaughn is kissing up his neck, sitting with his knees on either side of Rhys’ hips and somehow they’re managing to keep themselves upright, Vaughn is making his way up to his ear and Rhys has his human hand sliding up the back of Vaughn’s shirt. He’s got his robotic hand at his side, mostly because Vaughn pretty much banned him from touching him with it unless Rhys warned him beforehand because it was _cold_ , or something. 

Anyway, Vaughn stopped at his cheek, nose gently resting against his skin as he gave Rhys a chance to breathe, and when Rhys started laughing to fill the silence because it was the only way he could say ‘okay, I’m done breathing, you can keep on ravishing me now’ without killing the mood, Vaughn kissed right above his eyebrow, almost touching the port to one side.

Rhys’ laugh didn’t so much die as choke off violently and he jerked back, the chair squealing like nobody’s business in protest to his entire upper body pressing too much against it – Vaughn let out a surprised sound that sounded vaguely like “Rhys!” and they were tumbling backwards onto the floor in some chair-Rhys-Vaughn pile. They sat like that for a minute, until Vaughn propped his hands on Rhys’ shoulders and pushed himself up from there, looking down at Rhys with this sorta not-focused expression because his glasses were over on the desk and they were … on the floor. 

“What was that?”  
“I… have no idea, actually.” 

The thing about Vaughn, he knew Rhys wasn’t telling and Rhys knew that Vaughn knew because he could _scan_ him, but he kept quiet anyway. Moved on like it was no big deal, and Rhys was simultaneously miffed and relieved with the next words that came out of his mouth.

“So…” He said while he was still sitting on top of Rhys, warm and comfortable on top of his stomach, “are you, uh, still in the mood?”

Rhys took both hands and placed them on Vaughn’s thighs, his real thumb making small half-circles over his pants. He looked at that instead of Vaughn’s face. “No,” he said after a moment’s pause, grinning to himself and then at Vaughn when he finally pried his eyes away from his own hand. “Nuh-uh. Think all the blood went rushing back to my head, but that – that was nice, before we, y’know, fell.” 

Vaughn had pulled him back up, eventually, and they’d gone on with the rest of their day. That was that.

\--

The next time it happens, they’re in bed together. Not the sexy way, Rhys is half-asleep with a hoodie on and Vaughn is under him, equally half-asleep, because Rhys is like a big dog that isn’t aware of his height or weight and Vaughn has learned how to deal with him on top of him. One side of his face is pressed into Vaughn’s chest, Vaughn slowly running his fingers through Rhys’ hair. 

He’s in the middle of sliding his fingers upwards when his pinkie travels over the port and Rhys immediately rubs his face against his chest like he’s burrowing and tightens his grip around Vaughn, exhaling deep and relaxing once his finger passed over it and back into his hair. Rhys barely remembers it, he thought it was a dream at first, a really, _really_ good dream. 

\--

Okay, so it happens a lot. More times than Rhys can count. Vaughn’s waiting for him to say something about it; Rhys doesn’t know how to explain it. It’d never been so hard to deal with before, but then, nobody ever really touched his port with their bare fingers. Or their mouth. Or went near it. It freaked people out. Rhys usually wore a glove or something when he had to check and make sure his tech was still working, he didn’t want to lose _another_ arm – not that he thought that port would ruin his hand, he just, didn’t touch it. Nobody touched it.

Except for Vaughn. 

Rhys stared himself down in the mirror of the bathroom, tilting his head to look at the port. He tries touching it himself, his robotic fingers clenching against the counter by the sink as three of his fingers cover it, and before he knows it he’s falling into this rhythm of rubbing the pad of his index finger around it with his mouth slack and open. It’s embarrassing when he finally opens his eyes and sees how blissed he really looks, and he sucks in the drool that was threatening to drip from the corner of his mouth and stands up straight.

Maybe he should get Vaughn to do this instead. He can’t stomach looking at it, for some reason. Vaughn’s got a pretty decent knowledge of his tech just by trial and error; he’s had to deal with more malfunctions with Rhys than anyone else has and he’s been hiding in the bathroom for the past half-hour to avoid him when he’s probably the only damn person who’d get it. 

Probably… the only person he’d let touch it, too. 

Shit. 

“Vaughn?” He said, and it sounded raspy so he cleared his throat, twisting the knob on the door and heading out into the kitchen – this was Vaughn’s place, Rhys knew it like the back of his hand, and the more he walked, the more he felt awful for not coming right to Vaughn about this. “Vaughn, real important confession to make. See, this thing, I can’t touch it without it getting… weird. But you, uh, get it?”

Vaughn sat there on the opposite side of the counter with one eyebrow raised, mouth trying not to twitch upwards in a smile because of how _lost_ Rhys looked. “No, I don’t, Rhys.”

“I know. I _know_ that, Vaughn.” Rhys said, shoulders lifting defensively. “But I’m telling you you can… touch it, if you want. I can’t.” 

“Why not?”

“I think… I think it’s like touching myself.”

“Wait, _what_?”  
Rhys huffed, antsy and, however much he shoved the feeling back down, nervous. “Just come here, okay?” 

Vaughn moved around the counter and was there surprisingly quick, ushering Rhys backwards until he slid back onto one of the stools by the counter, leaving them both around the same height. Vaughn cupped his cheeks with both hands and kissed him, light and chaste for a split second, and then his glasses slid forward and bumped against Rhys’ face. He pulled back and went to push them back up, and then sighed, pressed his forehead against Rhys’.

“You know you can trust me, Rhys.”

Rhys immediately switched the topic. “With what? Are we talking about fondling the hole in the side of my head that thinks it’s something _else_ , or not poisoning my food?”

“Both. I can’t kill you until you get that promotion and you’ve bumped me up a couple ranks. Yvette will be my accomplice.”  
“Jeez, Vaughn, feeling the love. Just make sure I actually die or I’ll have to throw you out of an airl -- _hah_.”  
Rhys’ eyes fluttered shut and he tilted his head into Vaughn’s fingers where he pressed them against the port, so much so that Vaughn took his fingers out of the way and laid his hand flat against the side of Rhys’ face. Rhys still didn’t budge, though, looking completely ridiculous with his cheek squished up against Vaughn’s hand.  
“Rhys?”

“Mm?”

Vaughn waited for him to open his eyes again and then went back to kissing him, ignoring Rhys’ cranky expression – he’d only touched the thing for like _two seconds_ , he was so _impatient_ \-- and slid his hand into Rhys’ hair, opting to kiss it off before anything else. 

He slipped his thumb just under the port and Rhys exhaled against Vaughn’s lips, not really all that surprised when he started moving it upwards and closer that Rhys grabbed his ass and pulled him as close as he could get him without making him lose his balance. 

Vaughn let his thumb linger there, and after a few seconds of him lying still with his thumb covering the port entirely Rhys started shaking, physically shaking, and when Rhys got even more insistent with how deep their kiss was he knew he was just trying to hold in a moan, so Vaughn did what any best friend would do – he separated them both and went to kissing Rhys’ jaw instead.

That’s when Rhys moaned, deep and unrestrained almost right up against Vaughn’s ear. And then he immediately shut his mouth.  
“Okay, hear me out. Don’t say anything. It’s – “

“I think it’s the heat,” Vaughn said distractedly, still tracing his way around the port.

“Thewha?”

“The heat, Rhys. Like, my hand. It’s warm.”

“Sure is,” Rhys mumbled appreciatively, hardly listening, attention focused completely on Vaughn’s thumb. He was right, though, it _was_ warm and it was filling up his head. Literally. “Hey, Vaughn?”  
Vaughn tapped his thumb against the port in response and Rhys shivered, swallowing down all of the noises he almost made.  
“Don’t stop, okay?”  
He sounded so broken and out of breath, Vaughn almost did. Instead, he took Rhys’ chin in his hand and angled his face, replaced his thumb with his mouth. 

And exhaled.

Rhys made a series of disjointed gasps, bucking his hips up into Vaughn as much as he could, given the angle, cutting off his huffs by biting his lip and breathing through his nose.  
“Did you just … Rhys?”  
“S-S-Stop breathing on it,” Rhys managed to get out, thighs still shaking, and Vaughn immediately pulled back like he was afraid he’d hurt him when that really, _really_ wasn’t the case. At least, Rhys didn’t think so. He couldn’t feel much of anything, so it was probably too early to tell.  
He wheezed, trying to close his legs when he noticed how wide they were spread. “It’s the heat.” He said, out of breath, and Vaughn was still staring at him with this _look_ , like he was about to ask if Rhys was fine, all antsy, and Rhys rolled his eyes until they made eye contact. “Why’d you _blow_ on it?”  
“Carbon dioxide. I don’t know?” 

Rhys grabbed him then, after this brief period of absolutely nothing happening and Rhys steadying his breathing, or at least trying to, both arms wrapping around Vaughn’s waist, resting his forehead between Vaughn’s neck and shoulder. “That was awesome.”

“To me it just looked like I touched you for a minute and now you need new pants.” 

“I was fine until you put your _mouth_ on it!”

Vaughn had to choose _that_ moment to bring his thumb back to the port, and the noise Rhys made came out as a breathy whine. 

Rhys retaliated by biting down on his shoulder. Vaughn went the extra mile and replaced his thumb with his index and middle finger. 

“You know, there’s probably a high chance you’ll get murdered someday, Vaughn.” He barely made it through without stuttering, but he did, and he decided to cut the contact before he _could_ stutter, standing up and stepping away from the stool and towards Vaughn, still pressed against him, and Vaughn snorted.  
“Trust me, Rhys, your chance is higher. I’ve checked.” 

“Course you have. What would I do without you and your weird fetish for numbers?”

“You’d be dead already.”

“Ah.” 

“And at least I don’t have a fetish for the hole in the side of my head getting fingered,” Vaughn added, and Rhys scrunched up his nose, nudging Vaughn until he started walking backwards. 

“Oh yeah?” Rhys growled, looking properly offended, “ _You_ sure like _doing_ it.” They’d made some leeway, out of the kitchen and into the bedroom of the apartment, and when Vaughn hit the edge of the bed Rhys pressed their hips together.

“There’s a difference. I like seeing you happy.”

“Ew,” Rhys feigned disgust as he lifted Vaughn by the thighs and onto the bed, “I can’t even control it. It doesn’t make me happy. There’s a _reason_ nobody touches it.” 

“I touched it,” Vaughn said a little too quietly, paranoid, and Rhys hovered over him with his hands on either side of Vaughn’s head. 

“Yeah, you did.” 

“Is that okay?”

Rhys went silent for a moment, looking down at Vaughn’s face and his eyes, in particular, and Vaughn … Vaughn actually looked like he cared. Really cared about what Rhys thought. That’s what he’d been worried about, whether Vaughn would take it seriously when Rhys asked, and the longer he looked down at him the more stupid he felt. 

Of course Vaughn would take it seriously. 

Of _course_ Vaughn would be the only one currently laid out beneath him with their hips too close and a few of his fingers tentatively laced together over his chest where Rhys could see them to visually let him know he wasn’t about to try anything, asking Rhys whether it was _okay_.

He finally sighed, mouth curving up in a lax grin. “Yeah. It is.” 

Vaughn brought one hand up to his face and Rhys angled his head until his fingers were resting over the port instead. Vaughn took the hint and put a little more pressure on it with the pads of his fingers and Rhys jerked his hips forward on reflex, hard enough that both of them groaned. 

“I don’t blame you for not telling anyone, I don’t think anyone should have this much power,” Vaughn mused as Rhys shook above him, gripping the sheets tightly with one hand. 

“Don’t let it get to your head. Last thing I need is – ah, another power-hungry nemesis going after that promotion. You’re the only one I think actually could actually beat me – _crap_ – and I refuse to be the origin story to your weird power obsession.” 

“I’ll let it go to yours, then?” 

“Ha ha, very funny – “Rhys yelped when Vaughn pulled him down just to kiss the port side of his forehead, “— okay, sorry, great idea.”


End file.
